I’ve been a member of a surf band for several years and I’ve always loved the challenge of trying to capture those classic sounds of surf music from the early 60s. The instrumental music of that era had so much style and an exciting vibe. Fender amps with plenty of reverb and tremolo, in addition guitars with “whammy bars” became a must have for every garage band trying to emulate this style. I’ve tried to recreate that sound with this song

Share this:

This song was inspired by a building I saw in Barcelona, Spain that was designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi in 1877. His buildings are works of art that seem to be from another time and place. It moved me to see this one lit up at night. I had this feeling stuck in my head for weeks after seeing it, and wrote this song to capture that feeling. I used Ukulele, Classical Guitar, Bass, and Strings for the arrangement.

I wrote this song while on vacation in the Russian River Valley (California’s Wine Country) in the summer of 2012. I tried to capture the sound of the morning among the redwood trees and vineyards surrounding the place we were staying.

I wrote this song to capture the vibe of an elderly couple sitting on a park bench. I was going for an innocent, sentimental sort of vibe that might be used as background soundtrack for a scene in a movie, or a TV ad. To capture this sentimental, old-fashioned vibe, I made use of my favorite quirky-sounding instrument the Dobro, along with my favorite innocent-sounding rhythm instrument, the Ukulele, to add a bounce to the accompaniment. I used the Dobro in the same way that a slide trombone might be used in a song like this, to add that old-time kind of southern sound to the piece.

Share this:

I’ve always loved some of the theme music used in late-night-comedy shows. This song is my own experiment in coming up with a theme for a late-night-comedy show, using all of the elements that I like so much about this kind of theme music

Share this:

I wrote this song to capture the feeling of shopping at an outdoor market, much like the way I’ve felt when visiting an area called Las Ramblas in Barcelona. I used handclaps, acoustic guitar, and other acoustic sounds to get a more earthy sound as well as to add a more organic rhythm sound.

I wrote this song as a tribute to the genre known as “Space Age Pop”, made famous by composers such as Henry Mancini and Juan Garcia Esquivel in the late 50’s and early 60’s. This style of music was used in so much of the TV and film of the 60s for shows like “The Pink Panther”, “I Dream of Jeanie” and lots of others. I had a lot of fun working on this tune, but it really tested my skills in coming up with interesting horn parts that sounded authentic. I still love listening to these composers for inspiration

Share this:

1. The Lost Dutchman Trail - The Lost Dutchman Trail composed and recorded by Jim Pfeifer 2013 All Rights Reserved

I wrote this song as a self-imposed assignment to write a piece of music in the style of a spaghetti western films of the 1960s. I’ve always loved that music! This piece is the result of a few months work on the song ideas and arrangement I came up with. Not only did I have to spend some time working up my my whistling technique, I also called on my friend John Ryan to play the harmonica part to get that old-west vibe that I was going for. He nailed it. The real Lost Dutchman Trail is not far from where I live in Arizona. This song is an attempt to capture some of the magic and beauty I see in those picturesque Superstition Mountains.

Share this:

I started this song ideas as a simple experiment with a guitar part and vocal melody behind it, but the song took on a new life as I started writing orchestral parts to go with the guitar and vocal part. As the song developed it sounded like a Winter theme, so I re-titled it, even though I wrote it the midst of the Arizona summer heat, probably wishing for cooler weather.

Share this:

Being an Arizona resident for most of my life, I’ve spent a lot of time in the desert. I wanted to write a piece to capture the feeling of the harshness and beauty of the desert, but add an element of excitement also. To combine these elements I came up with this piece, where it opens as a stark, atmospheric soundscape but then moves into a groove-oriented action piece. If there were an action-movie made in the Arizona desert, this might make a good track for the opening scene as they endure the desert heat, then get chased by bad guys.

I’ve always loved the music used for various TV Shows and movies of the 1960′s, especially the music for sci-fi, spy movies, and comedies. I was trying to capture the sound of those shows I loved as a kid, doing my best to imitate my favorite session musicians of LA’s famous Wrecking Crew. I imagined that I’d been given the assignment to write a theme for a Don Knotts movie where he was cast as a CSI-style investigator for a UFO landing that has just occurred in Mayberry. This is what came out of my self-imposed assignment. Being a member of a surf band, I also wanted to incorporate some of those guitar sounds as well just, to add to the retro vibe. I used Baritone Guitar, Electric Guitar, Bass, and orchestral parts to fill out the sound. This song was a 2nd place Winner in the 2013 International Songwriting Competition.

I wrote this song to depict the feeling longing you get when you explore an old attic and find keepsakes or old photos that remind you of people from your past that are no longer with you. I wanted to capture that emotion in music. I used acoustic guitar, sparse piano melody, and a string quartet for this piece.

Share this:

This is a short Rockabilly instrumental that I wrote as a tribute to all of the various rockabilly guitar players that I’ve learned from over the years. I’ve always loved this style of guitar playing as it is a uniquely American style and represents a mash up of genres that collided in the 1950s including Country, Western Swing, and Blues, and represented the beginning of Rock-n-Roll.

Share this:

Why the Crazy Composer Blog?

Most creative pursuits require some amount of craziness on behalf of the creator. Letting go of your inhibitions, and stifling your inner critic, requires a certain amount of craziness. It’s only through that process of letting go that ultimately lead you to your best work. This has been my own experience, both as a musician and a composer.

I created this blog to share my passion for creating music, as well as my love for teaching about various aspects of the music creation process. As a composer today there are so many things that one needs to develop skills in (often it is equal parts musical and technical). This process can become almost overwhelming when you look at from the perspective of a solo composer, creating their own work in a project studio, playing most of their own parts:

musical concepts and theory

knowledge of various genres and styles of music

orchestration skills

performing techniques (assuming that you are playing your own instruments)

recording and production techniques

sound design and knowledge of various software used in music making

IT skills

knowledge of the music business

If trying to simultaneously juggle all of these aspects doesn’t make you go crazy, then I should probably come up with a new name for my blog. Crazy or not, I find this whole environment exciting! There’s nothing like the thrill of hearing your finished production through the studio monitors for the first time, after starting with an initial spark of an idea in your head and sculpting it into a finished work. I live for this! It demands every ounce of talent I can muster and every remaining brain cell I still have left after college. When a piece finally comes together, there’s simply nothing like that thrill of hearing it fully realized.

There are tons of web sites focused on reviewing music gear, or teaching guitar licks, but I haven’t found many sites dedicated to the big picture, the art of composing music in a project studio. I wanted to create this blog to serve as both an ongoing journal of my own composing projects, but also to share what I’ve learned with others as I make my own journey through this. If you find any of my own insights to be useful to you on your own musical journey, then I’ve accomplished my mission.

I am not a full-time professional composer and I don’t come from a famous music school (although I certainly would have liked to have had that opportunity). But I have been playing music for most of my life, and I’ve always had a fascination with music and the process of creating it. My life-long journey with music seems to boil down to this concept: I’m on a constant search to understand “why” various musical concepts sound good, and make me feel a certain way. It has never been enough for me to learn a certain riff or chord that I liked, without some attempt to understand why the composer decided to use that chord, that scale, in a song. Why does it work and why does it make me feel a certain way. I didn’t realize it back when I was first learning about music through my guitar playing, but this was the beginning of my life as a composer, always searching to understand more music and how to harness it to express various emotions and ultimately connect with people.

I was drawn to music at a young age, constantly figuring out little melodies on the piano and trying to copy songs that I’d heard on the radio. I was a “play by ear” player when I first started using whatever we had around the house, the piano, a harmonica, etc. I picked up the guitar at the age of 13, after taking a guitar class at school. I was immediately drawn to the instrument and practiced constantly. My school teacher urged me to study with a Jazz instructor to further my studies. After auditioning for a local Jazz guitar player, he agreed to take me on as a student and I studied with him for several years. I also had a huge fascination with Blues and Rock. In those days if you wanted to learn the Blues and Rock stuff your only option was to learn by listening to records, since most of the legit instructors would not teach the Rock and Blues stuff. I spent lots of time wearing out albums by Johnny Winter, BB King, Rory Gallagher, Santana, or anything else I could get my hands on that I could copy some licks from.

One of my musical turning points came when I first heard the Steely Dan album “Aja”. At that point my world of Jazz instruction and Blues were completely separate things, but when I heard this record I realized that there were people out there who somehow merged these two worlds into something new. I was completely blown away. I started reading all of the album liner notes to find out who these session musicians were. This got me into players like Larry Calton, Tom Scott, Robben Ford, Lee Ritenour and guys like that who had a more developed musical approach to Blues and Rock playing. This also led me to players like Pat Metheny, who I’ve admired for many years as much for his composing talents as well has his playing.

I had the opportunity to meet one of my all time heros, Alan Parsons, at CES last year

I’ve always had a certain musical curiosity that has driven me to learn new things. I remember hearing the intro to “The Twilight Zone” when I was a kid, and how it made me feel the first time I’d heard it. I spent hours with my guitar, twisting my fingers in various ways up the neck until I could copy the lick exactly with my guitar. (only later I learned that this part was actually recorded with two guitars) I saved that lick and used it to make people laugh at rehearsals whenever someone would say something stupid, or at basketball games with the “pep band” whenever the referee would make a bad call. The audience seemed to like it too, especially if the referee made a particularly bad call.

One of my friends in junior high had a talent for making sound effects and impersonations with his voice. We would sit down with a tape recorder and make little comedy shows, where he would create these voice characters and I would compose background music to go with each character, spacey music for the alien story, funky music for the James Brown character, game show music for the quizz show section, etc. I found it both challenging and great fun to come up with music that would enhance my friends impersonations. Had I only known back then that there were people who made their livings doing such things, I might have taken it more seriously.

I studied Electrical Engineering in college but I continued my musical studies as well, taking many courses in Music Theory, Jazz Improvisation, Electronic Music, and playing in the university Jazz ensembles. I also started working as a session musician at a local studio that created demos for a local song writer, who owned the studio.

Working at Wildfire Studios in Las Cruces, New Mexico during the 80s

This was my first exposure to arranging and the importance of having good material to start with. We were given horrendously bad songs and asked to make them sound like pop hits of the day. It was a huge challenge to take crap songs and make them sound like something fit for the radio. Soon after this I started collecting my own gear to start my own home studio, so that I could experiment with my own songs.

Over the years I’ve kept up my music activities, even though I’ve made my living in the technology industry. I’ve played in a variety of bands and also taken session work for various musicians in the area playing country, mex-tex, rock, blues, Jazz, rockabilly, surf, and worship music among other things.

I started getting more serious about composing in the last 10 years as the technology has vastly improved, and professional recording technology has become more accessible without resorting to bank robbery to fund it. In addition, the internet has provided new ways for musicians to connect with potential opportunities, and other like-minded folks all over the world.

Working in Las Vegas 2007 doing session work for producer Tommy DeVito of The Four Seasons

In the recent past I entered a composing contest for a cartoon called “The Zenoids” where my composition made it to one of the top 40 finalists. The whole process of going through that contest and competing against other serious composers, made me realize just how much I’ve always been drawn to this world. Sometimes your path becomes easier to see as you look back on where you’ve been. Or perhaps, one day I’ll look back on this and go slamming into a parked car, who knows?

At the current time I’m still writing my stuff and always searching for new things to explore musically. My ultimate goal is to license my music for advertising, web media, TV, Film, or whatever it may be useful for. Welcome to my blog, and I hope that you find something useful here.